Kill the whole lawn?

I got a call today from a potential client who is a realtor. She has anew house that was built and its been sitting for like a year, the yard is NOT leveled in fact there is a huge pile of soil in the front yard that needs to be brought to the back for back filling. Im not touching any of that but she wants me to come out and spray the heaping pile of dirt to kill all the large weeds and whatevber else may be growing in that stuff so that when she has allll the dirt spread around the weeds wont be coming back through on the sod or competing with the seed or whatever she decides to do. My question is.... is it really necessary to kill all these weeds before she has the yard all dug up and the dirt moved around and everything re-graded? If we just apply sod to the yard wont that smother any weeds that may be wanting to come up[ after the leveling and grading? Now if she just wants to seed the lawn then i guess that may be a ltitle worse and there is more of a threat i guess for weeds infestation. She just wants the house to look good asap because hse wants to sell it in august. Any suggestions on this weed stuff? Thanks

Weed seeds can lay dormant in soil for years and then decide they want to show their ugly heads once someone comes by and stirs them to the top of the pot by regrading the area. Killing out the existing weeds will reduce the volume of new seeds dropped but isnt absolutely necessary. Sod will do a pretty good job keeping most weed seeds from germinating but weeds such as nutsedge will eventually pop thru. With seeding once you get the seed established a good broadspectrum weed control app will clean most of the weeds out of the new grass.

Turf establishment is not an overnight thing. And weed control is not a one shot process and all is well. If you can make some money and reduce the next generation of weeds a bit then do the job, its not going to hurt anything and may actually help a bit in reduceing some of those perrenial weeds like nutsedge and mugwort that are much harder to kill once established in the lawn.

so she wants you to spray a pile of soil with some form of roundup? is that right? go ahead and do it. guarantee nothing. i dont know how big of a pile you are talking about, but i would think you would have to saturate the soil to get contact with the weed seeds. and not even 100% at that. so go ahead and do it, if that will bring her peace of mind. but like i said guarantee nothing.

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Hey guys , i just went and looked at the job, the entire lawn has been over run by weeds. BIG tall weeds like 5 feet high, so i figured first i must use a trimmer or something of the sort and knock them all down, then wait like a week for some foliage to come back and then have them sprayed with round-up. I was also considering taking my bobcat and scraping the surface of the entire yard beings its all got to be broght up to grade anyways and dumping all the weeds and dirt int he woods behind the house( which is ok to do). Once the ground is scraped most of the root system for the roots will be gone and things will be much more manageable. Let me know about both of these methods if im on the right track and what you think should be done PLEASE =)

Your on the right track as far as knocking the weeds down and then waiting for them to grow back up before spraying them. Talk to the customer and find out what kind of timeline she is looking to work with. The moving the pile of dirt and weeds to the back of the yard just means its gonna have to be dragged back out of there later so may not be the best option.

Lawnboy,

Roundup has no soil activity and will have no effect on weed seed in any way, no matter how much you pour on the ground. You can apply roundup and seed a lawn the same day if you really wanted too. Roundup only kills existing actively growing plants. You really should know what your talking about before throwing off advice as an expert. Not everyone will look to see that your 19 and have 1 year in the business. Im not saying this to put you down and dont hold myself out to be a know it all, but if your not sure of the answer from your own knowledge, you might be giving someone bad advice.

2nd what CM said. Takes a pre-emergeant to stop seed. Guntruck if you decided to sod try Ronstar. It can be safely applied to newly installed sod. Weeds in the subsoil have a way of popping through the sod. That is why we use sand under our sod....never ever topsoil.